


Agents of the State

by Hypatia_66



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Authoritarian Government, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fascism, Gen, THRUSH
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:00:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25547854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hypatia_66/pseuds/Hypatia_66
Summary: THRUSH has taken over the federal government. UNCLE is disbanded and the country is under military rule. Waverly escapes with his trusted agents and makes plans from afar.
Relationships: Illya Kuryakin & Alexander Waverly, Illya Kuryakin & Napoleon Solo
Comments: 16
Kudos: 18





	Agents of the State

The room was silent and could have seemed empty but for an occasional rustle of movement. It was full of men and women staring at the dais. The object of their gaze: an old man who stood solemnly contemplating the end of everything he had worked for.

They now looked around for someone to speak. It was no surprise when Napoleon Solo stepped forward. He simply said, “You need to get away, sir.”

Waverly bristled slightly and almost snapped out a denial, but then his shoulders slumped a little and he said, “Whether and where I go – and what I do, afterwards – is not for a public meeting.” He looked up. “Ladies and gentlemen, that is not because I distrust you but because it will be safer for you not to know.”

He stepped down from the platform and left the room. Silence prevailed even as the people in it dispersed back through the gunmetal corridors to their offices to collect their belongings. The senior security staff, tasked with destroying or hiding sensitive material had already gone down to the basement.

Solo followed his chief back to the latter’s domain where Lisa Rogers was packing up for him. They stood looking around what had become a war room and Waverly immediately made a beeline for his humidor. “I’ll take charge of that, Miss Rogers,” he said, ignoring the bags that ought to have taken his interest.

“I was able to fill it for you this morning, sir,” she said and, to her great surprise, he clasped her shoulder in speechless thanks.

The banks of monitors and communications continued to flash like any other day: though latterly communications had been curtailed and cryptic in content. “Has there been anything from Mr Kuryakin yet?” said Waverly.

“No sir, not for two days now. Not since the recall went out.”

“So he hasn’t responded to it – I didn’t think he would,” said Waverly with a satisfied smile.

Lisa glanced at Solo and looked away again. His set expression, so unlike his normally sunny demeanour, was both a defence and a warning.

“Why not come with me, sir?” he said quietly. “Lisa, you too – you know too much for your safety. Come to Berlin with me.” Solo had seen her look of concern.

“No, Mr Solo. In any case, we would attract attention – your face is well known and mine isn’t entirely unfamiliar to those now in power.”

“I was thinking we could disguise ourselves. You, sir, could wear a beard and go as Count von Something. Lisa and I could go as husband and wife, taking our disabled father in his wheelchair for a trip to see the old country….”

Two identical glares appeared to cancel out that idea. “How about brother and sister, then?”

That went down better. “Is it the wheelchair or the beard that’s the problem?” he asked Waverly.

“The wheelchair,” growled Waverly.

“How about an ebony cane with a silver top?”

Waverly appeared to find merit in that idea, judging from his thoughtful look. He straightened and said, “How do we find Mr Kuryakin?”

Lisa looked at Waverly. “We have no secure means of contacting him, now that communications are monitored,” she said.

“He won’t be in contact with the embassy either, not since the ambassador was recalled and arrested,” said Waverly thoughtfully. “Who else is Mr Kuryakin likely to know in Berlin apart from UNCLE colleagues?”

“Artists and musicians, probably,” said Solo. “He’ll find us; he’ll be expecting us.”

Waverly looked at him sceptically. “How will he know?”

“Illya always knows.”

<><><>

When Waverly’s summons came, Illya Kuryakin read its message correctly and stayed on in Berlin. He shared some of his anxieties with his friends.

“The President has enormous power under the Constitution,” Illya explained. “He can do so much damage without reference to Congress, whatever the opposition from the people’s representatives. He can even authorise dropping a nuclear bomb.”

Heinz winced. “But the official report says that he isn’t contemplating or taking action against international agencies,” he said.

Illya gave him a look. “That means he has done so. Never believe anything until it’s officially denied,” he said. “You know that as well as I do. It’s a fundamental truth when dealing with people like this.”

The others smiled ruefully at Illya’s words. Living as they did in this Western enclave inside Soviet-controlled East Germany, they certainly knew the truth of that. There was plenty of evidence to confirm it.

They were gloomily drinking coffee in a bar near Zoo Garten station. Sent to manage the débâcle caused by Gerald Strothers’ ineptitude over Harry Beldon’s defection, Illya had completed the mission and with the new Head of Section in place, he had been about to return to New York when news of the disaster arrived. What had seemed to be an extreme right-wing influence in the White House and the Senate had turned out to be even more malign.

“My guess is that my friend and colleague, at least, will try to get out and come here,” Illya was now saying. “But when? How will I know?”

“Leave a message pinned up somewhere which no-one but he will understand. People scrawl all sorts of things on the walls of stations,” said Eva.

Illya’s expression lightened, and he became absorbed in thought. After addressing him several times without getting a response, Eva and Heinz looked at each other and then at him. “Illya?”

He looked up. “I’ve thought of what I can say,” he said simply. “They might be cleared away but I can leave messages at the station here, and maybe at Charlottenburg and Wannsee.”

<><>

The high-ranking member of THRUSH who had acquired such extraordinary dominance over the President now exerted power over the workings of Federal government but his influence did not extend beyond the USA so, once outside US airspace, in a British aircraft, they felt fairly safe from interference.

The journey was going to be very tiring for an old man. The rather beautiful ebony cane wasn’t really enough. He had once been an active man but, now stiffening with age, and with other health conditions that he could normally ignore, Waverly was obliged to confess to his need for rest. They therefore broke the journey, staying overnight in London and again in Frankfurt where Waverly asked Napoleon to get rail tickets for Braunschweig – “That’s Brunswick, to you, Mr Solo.”

“Any special reason, sir?” said Napoleon, ignoring the slur with dignity.

“For a very safe passage into West Berlin, of course. Flying in is much too dangerous – a passenger plane was shot down last year.”

Waverly’s past connections with the British army had obtained him tickets on the Berliner, a military train that travelled between West Berlin and Braunschweig and enabled British army personnel and their families to get out of and back into West Berlin.

The train was locked and barred for travel through the Iron Curtain into East Germany but apart from that conditions were comfortable. It had separate compartments, which guaranteed some privacy, and there was a restaurant car.

But it was very slow. They were prepared for the East German guards who boarded the train to check identities during the long stop in Marienborn and brought dogs to sniff out smuggled goods. Trained to be sceptical, they looked very hard at the UNCLE-supplied false passports, noting the decidedly unrelated faces of these passengers. They questioned Waverly, the only German-speaker of the three, about the obvious differences between the physiognomy of his supposed children.

Italian first wife. “Ach so?” Died in childbirth. “Schade,” they said, uninterested. So why were they travelling to Berlin? To visit a nephew and his family? Who? Where?

Waverly, anticipating just such questioning, produced the name and address of an army officer. “So? Alles gut.” And they moved on to the next compartment, leaving the three to sit tense and silent until the guards had left the carriage altogether.

Even that wasn’t the end of it. There was another incursion and more searches at Potsdam before the train was allowed to cross into West Berlin, where it stopped at Wannsee, and finally Charlottenburg, where they got out.

“How will we make contact with Illya?” Lisa asked.

“He’s probably left mystic runes for us to read,” said Napoleon. “We’ll have to look around and see if he has. Are you all right, sir? You must be very stiff.”

“Perfectly all right, thank you, Mr Solo.”

He left Lisa and Waverly sitting in a waiting room and went to look around. But a cleaner had been before him. The station walls were pristine. There was nowhere to leave any kind of message. He returned to his travelling companions. “We’ll get a taxi to the hotel,” he said.

Waverly said, “We can get the bus or the S-Bahn. It’s cheaper than a taxi.”

Napoleon and Lisa exchanged a look of suppressed amusement. “A taxi will be quicker, sir – and the driver will know the way.”

Napoleon had been able to make use of their night in Frankfurt to arrange the hotel booking – merely by flirting with the young woman on reception who had a friend in West Berlin. Airport hotels in London and Frankfurt were well enough, but in West Berlin they needed a quiet suburban hotel. The result was exactly what he wanted, in a suburb that was becoming leafy again, not far from West Berlin’s main station, the Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten, where he had hopes of finding a message.

<><><>

Illya met up with his friends again the next day at the same coffeehouse. Far enough from UNCLE headquarters and right next to an efficient public transport hub, it was ideal.

“Have you left the message yet?”

“No. I’m going to look around for the best place.”

“What does it say?”

“Something Napoleon always remembers that I said once. He’ll recognise it.”

“In English?”

“In German and English. If I put your contact number – not mine, for obvious reasons – you can let me know if he telephones,” said Illya. “And if anyone other than Napoleon phones, you can say it was part of an art installation.”

<><>

Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten, though unusual among European mainline stations for the strange cries coming from the zoo nearby, like most European mainline stations, was busy, slightly down-at-heel and often not well cleaned. Among the litter, therefore, were bits of paper stuck to walls and panels of advertisements.

Napoleon scanned the ads looking for Illya’s distinctive handwriting. A little distracted by offers of questionable activity, or the merely obscene, he stepped away to look elsewhere when something caught his eye… Yes, there!

He smoothed the crumpled paper on the wall and read the words, “No man is free who has to work for a living, but I’m available” and a telephone number. Smiling, he scribbled down the number.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder and snatched the piece of paper as he turned. Solo was about to lash out then suddenly beamed. “Illya!”

“Your reactions are becoming slow, my friend, very slow,” said Illya, but he was smiling too. “So, you made it out. I knew you’d come if you could.”

“As you see – and with Mr Waverly, and Lisa too. Waverly has useful friends – we came on the Berliner.”

Affecting amazement, Illya said, “You _all_ managed to get here? Undetected?”

“How could you doubt it? With the Waverly-Solo team in action, the impossible was easy…”

Illya laughed, and then the reality of the situation turned him solemn.

“Napoleon, what are we going to do?”

<>

Disquieting reports about brutal suppression of US-wide protest movements; stories of federal hit squads viciously beating, shooting, teargassing, and kidnapping peaceful protesters and innocent bystanders began to appear in the press in both halves of the city. The East German government naturally saw very little to trouble its conscience about conditions in the United States, but West Germans felt very differently, their recent past a continuing source of shame and horror.

Waverly arranged a meeting with UNCLE’s new Section one Head, Werner Hartmann, and a couple of his agents in the UNCLE safe house that they had moved into, rather than at headquarters.

“How did the US turn into a fascist state so easily?” Hartmann said. “We thought it was meant to be the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.”

“Depends what you mean by free and brave,” said Napoleon.

Illya, unsurprised by it all, merely shrugged. “Every country has the potential to turn authoritarian. It just needs a catalyst,” he said.

Waverly slapped his pipe into the palm of his hand and said bitterly, “It happened the same way as it did here in Germany. It only needs one vainglorious, power-hungry, ignorant and profoundly bigoted individual to gain a position of prominence and you have the perfect conditions for subversion by malign forces – and when you have a population looking the wrong way…”

“You have a happy hunting ground for THRUSH,” said Napoleon, completing the scenario. “They aren’t all looking the wrong way, sir,” he added. “There is hope. Some states are refusing to comply and students are in revolt everywhere.”

“Indeed,” Hartmann agreed, and continued, “So, is there any scope for a mission to infiltrate?”

“Assassinate the President?” one of the German agents suggested.

“Thereby making an unworthy victim a martyr? Great idea.” said Illya.

“What about the President’s poisonous mentor?”

“It’s a pleasing thought. But it’s not really the UNCLE way, is it?” said Napoleon.

“One thing, the young are not deterred by the Federal officers’ violence. Protest movements may grow,” said Waverly, echoing Solo’s earlier remark.

“Is it the Feds?” asked Napoleon. “I thought it was THRUSH.”

“Of course it’s the Feds,” said Illya. “They were already agents of the state. With THRUSH encouragement, its agents are even freer to behave like the thugs they are.”

“We know that the Federal government, having withdrawn its support from UNCLE, has now eliminated all UNCLE offices, and is also persecuting its agents…” said Hartmann.

“If it can find them,” Illya put in.

“Maybe the UN needs to get involved…”

“The United Nations building in New York has been closed down. The UN is operating out of the Swiss office in Geneva now,” said Waverly. “Furthermore, its US forces have been disbanded and their bases sealed. I don’t suppose Canada is keen to start a war from its own UN base.”

“Impasse,” said Illya morosely.

“International sanctions?” said Napoleon. “Otherwise it’ll be like going back to the thirties – people forced to be either a fascist or a communist sympathiser… Sorry, Illya.”

Illya nodded impatiently. “The world’s liberal democracies will surely fear infection and want to do something about it,” he said, “so, maybe that _is_ where UNCLE needs to help.”

Waverly, who had been drooping a little at all the pessimism, brightened. “Yes,” he said. “I suggest we get to work straightaway. Herr Hartmann, you and I must organise. We have plenty of agents who can spread the word.”

<><><>

Napoleon and Illya took a walk together in the Tiergarten and came out near the wall that divided the city. Behind it and towering over it was the Brandenburg Gate, ironically once called the Peace Gate. Armed guards watched them through binoculars from the watchtowers along the wall. The two agents stood silently contemplating the effects of authoritarianism. Then they turned and walked away.

<>

Napoleon took a final drink from his glass and replacing it carefully on the table, as if it were his last, said, “Right. My taxi should be here. Illya, I’m going back.”

Illya glanced at him with foreboding. “What do you mean, going back? Where to? To do what?”

“You must stay here and keep Waverly and Lisa safe. Keep the UNCLE flag flying, till we can open up again.”

“To do what, Napoleon?” Illya repeated.

“I… just don’t come after me, Illya,” and as Illya opened his mouth to protest, “I mean it. I wish you could come. It’s been a good partnership. I’ll miss you.”

“Napoleon! You can’t keep me out of…?”

Napoleon ignoring Illya’s sudden anguish went out into the hall, picked up the packed bag he had left there and walked out. Illya, following, got no response from him until a taxi pulled up and Napoleon got in.

“Napoleon, please…”

“You’re my dearest friend, Illya. You’ve given me so much… If I fail, remember that. Goodbye.”

“And if you don’t fail – fail at what, for God’s sake? – what then?” demanded Illya, holding onto the door of the taxi.

“Then we’ll meet again, Illya, and start over. I can’t let UNCLE down now.”

The taxi pulled away leaving the forlorn figure of his dearest friend standing in the street. Illya turned to go back into the building and found Mr Waverly waiting for him.

“He’s going back,” he said. “Did you know about this, whatever it is?”

“Yes, Mr Kuryakin. I arranged it.”

“Without me?”

“Mr Solo is safer on his own. Together you are too easily identified. And I need you here.”

“What is he going to do? Can you at least tell me that?”

“Not yet, Mr Kuryakin.”

<><><>

“No news is good news, Illya,” said Lisa as they scanned the day’s newspapers for any sign of Napoleon’s activities, as they had been doing for several weeks. “If he’d been apprehended, they’d trumpet it loudly – wouldn’t they?”

“If you say so.”

In the weeks since Napoleon’s departure, there had been a growing threat of US military action which was raising concern in the Eastern bloc. Illya had managed to obtain not only all the Berlin papers, but also East German and Russian newspapers which were reporting threats to their own areas of operation.

So, when he spotted an item in a Moscow publication, he smiled for the first time in many days.

“Lisa, listen, this is interesting,” he said.

It was a student newspaper. Russian students had discovered, and had been listening in to a subversive radio channel in the US, and now reported an arresting development coming out of Washington.

Any other woman might have flung her arms around him; Lisa, made of sterner stuff, merely clasped his arm. “Quick, Illya. This is what Mr Waverly has been waiting for!” she said eagerly and followed him as he rushed into Waverly’s room waving it.

“Look, sir! Something’s happened.”

Waverly looked, smiled and said, “Translate for me, would you, Mr Kuryakin. My Russian is very rusty.”

“It says, ‘There has been silence from the White House in Washington DC since federal troops were ordered back to their bases by their generals. There has been no sign of the President or his special adviser, but the Vice-President and members of Congress have been observed returning to the Capitol, from which they had been excluded for some weeks.’”

Illya looked at him hopefully for signs of excitement, but naturally there were none. “Sir, what do you think has happened?”

“Well, with any luck, this is a sign that Mr Solo has achieved what he was sent to do,” said Waverly calmly.

“Which was?” Illya demanded, yet again.

“If possible, to ambush and remove that THRUSH chief in the White House, or failing that, to get access to National Guard generals and organise – well, a sort of coup. Not to get rid of the President, of course, just the THRUSH man.”

Illya stared. “Why isn’t it reported anywhere else?”

“It may be by tomorrow – perhaps even tonight.”

<><><>

The next day brought news that surprised nearly everyone.

The United States President had stepped down pleading serious illness – no-one knew what illness, or – since he hadn’t been seen – whether he was even alive. There was nothing about his equally invisible special adviser in any of the press reports, which Illya regarded as a significant omission.

The Vice-President had been sworn in immediately and all his predecessor’s executive orders had been revoked. There was even talk of amending the Constitution to restrict presidential powers, which Illya thought was carrying optimism too far.

He now stared at a photograph on the front page of _Der Tagespiegel_ which showed the new President standing on the steps of the Capitol surrounded by cheering supporters. Among them was a curiously solemn face, one he had feared they might never see again.

Lisa, leaning over him, felt him quiver and put her arm round his shoulder, “Will you show Mr Waverly, or shall I?”

“We’ll both go,” said Illya grinning up at her suddenly. He felt in the inside pocket of his jacket for his communicator and switched it on with a flourish.

<>

At three in the morning, Napoleon was awake, knowing that his impatient partner would by now have seen the German morning papers. He pulled out his communicator. “Open Channel D,” he said.

“Napoleon?” was the instant response. “I was just going to call you to see if the system was working.”

“It is now. You’ve seen the news, I guess.”

“Of course. How did you do it? What have you done with the THRUSH man?”

“Not on this line, Illya. It wasn’t exactly the UNCLE way,” Napoleon said soberly.

“I see. Needs must when the devil drives, is that it?”

“You got it.”

“Mr Waverly has already been in touch with the other UNCLE Section One heads,” Illya told him. “They are planning a meeting to discuss how to restart UNCLE in the United States.”

Napoleon closed his eyes. “That’s good. But, Illya, you’d better tell him – the New York headquarters is a wreck. It’ll have to be virtually rebuilt. It’s a disaster.”

“Napoleon, the whole of Europe had to be rebuilt after the war,” said Illya gently. “One building? It’s nothing. Our people will come back; files can be retrieved, systems rebuilt and improved…”

But Napoleon had lost some of his sunny optimism. “Things aren’t going to be the same, Illya. My country has changed – it has been betrayed and now it’s fractured.”

Napoleon’s despondency touched Illya’s heart. He knew what it was like to survey the destruction of everything he had known.

“And I’m not the same after …”

“Napoleon, of course you are or you wouldn’t be saying it,” said Illya, and, reminding Napoleon of his words when he left Berlin, he added, “My dearest friend, we’ll be meeting again soon. We’ll start over.”

**Author's Note:**

> Schade: shame  
> Alles gut: literally ‘all good’; no worries, fine, etc.


End file.
